


Mediocre

by Nevalkitty



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Past Sexual Abuse, Pre-Canon, Very brief scene of violence, Warboys are awful but not as bad as they could have been, he's not important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 10:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13432362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevalkitty/pseuds/Nevalkitty
Summary: What use is a barren wife to a god? Abandoned, a young woman finds a new way forward.





	Mediocre

     “Mediocre.” He’d said.

She never thought the word lovely until that moment. For 2500 days, she’d been a Wife until the Organic declared her barren. Then Joe scoffed, turned and left the vault. It might have been the best moment of her life.

To be called mediocre meant that he didn’t want her, wouldn’t touch her, she could leave. She sat on her bed staring at the ground for ages. Until an Imperator came. She didn’t know their names, the Imperators, and she didn’t care to. They were Joe’s like she was, but they wanted to be. They worshiped him as much as the Warboys.  

     “ _Maybe not as much_.” She thought. “ _The Warboys call him daddy_.”

     “Immortan says you’re gone.” The Imperator told her as he grabbed her by her long hair. “Says the boys can have you.”  Her eyes widened.

     “No!” She yelled as she struggled to get away from him.

He was so big though and he dragged her out of the Vault. Some of the other Wives yelled and pleaded with him, but he was under Immortan Joe’s orders and wouldn’t be stirred.

She was pulled through dark tunnels, the floor wet and dirty. Her bare feet scraped as she pulled back against his force. She tried to hold onto anything, the walls, the pipes, corners, to stop him from taking her. He finally just grabbed her around the waist and lifted her on to his shoulder. She screamed and hit him. Hit his back and shoulders. Hit his head where she could reach.

    “No! No! Let me go! Put me down with the Wretched! Kill me!”

 She wanted to jump off the side of the Citadel. If he let her go she’d run to the edge, no hesitation, just open air and freedom. Death would be mercy compared to what was coming.

 He threw her off his shoulder after a time and she hit the ground hard yelling out. No more gentle treatment for an Immortan’s Wife.

     “Immortan says she’s yours now.” He yelled to the Warboys in the garage and then he walked back out into the corridor.

 She lay panting on the ground. There were shuffling sounds around her, clinking and boots scraping as Warboys moved closer. She braced herself for a fight. She wouldn’t lay back. Not now after everything she’d been through. She wasn’t broken. Joe’d never broken her, not in thousands of days. They wouldn’t break her now.

   Suddenly one boy grabbed her arm and she reached out at him with the other one, scratching and hissing. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled herself up enough to get her teeth around skin. She bit hard, tearing and screaming all the while. Blood spurted out, covering her as the Warboy fell back. She held on, scratching his face as he went down clutching his throat.

     “ _So much blood.”_ She thought distantly.

    He gasped and gargled out something that might have been a yell. Would have been if he’d still had vocal cords, but they were in her mouth now and she spat onto the floor. She rolled off him and crouched ready for the next one, but no one came forward.

The Warboys all stared at the boy on the floor groaning and gasping until he stopped moving, his hands falling from his neck, his eyes staring up at nothing. Blood pooled under her feet. She could feel it dripping down her face. She watched and waited but none moved.

     “Shine.” She heard whispered.

It was accompanied by agreeing murmurs. She backed herself against a wall, Warboys moving out of her way still staring at the body.

     “She got Rubber.” One said.

     “She killed him soft.” From another.

Suddenly they all cheered, jostling each other, yelling out, smiling even, but she had a hard time telling their expressions with the paint on their faces. They were yelling words like chrome and shiny, and one kicked the dead boy and yelled, “Mediocre!”

 She turned her head quickly as they got closer, eyeing each one and growling. She chomped her teeth at them, and they jumped back laughing.

      _“What is happening?”_ She thought.

One boy, close to her age she thought, maybe a bit older, pushed past the others. He turned towards them.

     “Back off ya rust heads! Get back ta work!”

He seemed to be in charge. He had bumps covering one side of his neck and goggles perched on his grease blackened forehead she noticed. The Warboys listened for the most part, turning back to engines and cars that scattered the large room, but some lingered. The boy pushed and growled at them until they moved away, a few carrying the dead body. Then he turned back to her.

She pushed herself up, standing against the wall, hands at her sides ready to attack. He put his hands up at his shoulders as he moved slowly towards her.

     “That was real shine, Wife, real shine. M’name’s Ace.” She just stared at him.

     “How come Immortan let go of a wife like ya?” He asked.  She said nothing, but he waited, looked at her silently until she growled out.

     “Can’t have babies.” He nodded and put his hands down. “How ‘bout ya do somthin’ else?”  She squinted at him.

     “How ‘bout ya be a Warboy?”

     “ _No_ ,” she thought, “ _I’m not his. I won’t go back to being his_.”  But she relaxed. It seemed like he wasn’t going to hurt her.

     “Ya seem like ya’d be good at it. Bett’r than these pedestrians I’ve got ‘round here.”  He crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels, sniffing and thumbing his nose.

     “Don’t know how to.” She told him.

     “I’d teach ya.” He said back like it was that simple.

 She turned, looking at the room. It was a cavern really, with one wall open to the air. There were ropes and cables swinging. The lifts that sent cars down to the ground, out of the citadel, out to the desert, were pulled up.

Treadmill Rats were chained to the pulleys with Warboys rushing around them carrying tools and parts. Some boys were half inside cars and trucks, bent over open hoods. Warpups were everywhere. Some scurried around Warboys, the boys pushing at them and at each other. They yelled orders and laughed with each other. Some glanced back at her, but not like they wanted her, more like they admired her, like she’d impressed them.

She huffed and side-eyed Ace as she walked past him to the edge of one of the lifts. She looked down, thousands of feet down. She could see the dots of the Wretched moving like ants. She could see the other towers of the citadel with their green tops and cranes. She could see the glass covered vault and she shuddered up and down her spine.

She stared at the gaping skull, His sign, embellished on the side of the tower across. A reminder that this was all Joe’s, the Warboys, the Wives, the Milking Mothers, the Wretched, the Imperators. His.

She’d tried to escape it all before, many times she had slipped past the guards at the vault, had wormed her way through tunnels, but she’d never made it down. She’d never gotten away, always caught and dragged back to Him.

But He didn’t want her now. She could do it. She could drop down to the Wretched, run past them to the open road and then…

There was nothing for miles, no water, no food. She didn’t even have shoes. She had no real clothes, just gauzy strips of cloth that she’d been forced into when she’d been taken with her mother.

      “ _Mama.…_ ” She thought.

Her mother had died on the third day by her own hand. All this time she’d wished she had died that day too but hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. Joe didn’t let his wives have anything sharp and the windows in the vault had been sealed tight.

But now if she could get a car… She couldn’t drive that far. If she could get enough water… They’d never give it to her. If she could get past the mountains in the distance, covered in Buzzards and Rock Riders, she could fight, she could shoot… She had been initiated Before. Had been starting her training with the Vuvalini, but could she make it? No. She wouldn’t get far. She needed too much to get there. So how…?

She turned back to Ace. He had followed her, still stood with arms crossed, looking at her. Brown eyes without hate or want, just curious.

She could train here. She could use them, the Warboys. She could beat Joe at his own game. Make them love her, help her. Then she could make it. With help, she’d work her way up to Imperator, she decided. She’d drive the War Rig out, full of water and food and Guzzoline. Back to the Green Place of Many Mothers, back to home.

      “ _I can do it_ ,” she thought, “ _it’ll take time, but it’s possible_.”

She walked up to Ace. He wasn’t so tall that she had to lean back to look him in the eyes. She liked that. She crossed her arms right back at him and said, “All right.”

He smiled, and it was so much better than any smile she’d ever gotten from Joe.

She hadn’t thought a man’s smile could be anything but slimy or mean. Even though Ace was missing teeth and the ones he still had were crooked, his smile gave her hope. Hope that she held onto in her breast, clutched like a flame, warm and reassuring. She could do this. She’d win.

     “What’s ya name?” He asked.

     “Furiosa.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually written more for this story where Furiosa kinda adopts Slit and Nux, and her plans change with them coming with her and the wives during the escape but I not sure about posting the rest.


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